Screening: ‘Women’s Day’ by Dolya Gavanski

As an actor in London, Dolya Gavanski has played a dizzying array of Russian stereotypes, from spies to sex workers, to oligarchs’ wives. But the women she remembered from her Soviet days were different.

This award-winning film which premiered at the Moscow International Film Festival includes astounding, untold personal and inspiring stories told by extraordinary women, pioneers and survivors, born in the USSR.

Intimate, yet epic in its scale, surprising, funny, painful and contradictory, the film was extensively researched and filmed over three years.  This is the untold history of women in Russia – but the topic resonates with the world today, not just in relation to post #METOO, but also in terms of the progress of political ideals and the very redefinition of what it means to be a woman.

The director, Dolya Gavanski, a London based actress and filmmaker, spent her teenage years in Russia. She has long been fascinated by Russian feminism and what Russian women had to go through to survive; their empowerment and fight for equality as demonstrated by the heroines of the film:  The Nobel Laureate, the ‘Voice of the USSR’, the beauty blogger, the cyber security boss; veterans of Stalingrad and the Leningrad Siege, the exiled feminist, the Tractorist Heroine and many more. These women were forged in a culture that had officially proclaimed women equal to men.  They were told they could achieve it all, but at what cost – and what was the reality?

Gavanski says: “I was astonished by the stories, and the women I encountered, from the 30 year-old make up genius through to the 94 year-old veteran of Stalingrad. I was surprised, and, deeply moved. They opened up to me – and opened me up – in ways that I had not expected.”

In Russian with English subtitles.

Screenings:

8 March, 15:30 Curzon Bloomsbury Tickets

8 March, 19:00 Regent Street Cinema Tickets